Hyper Local Weather

Building a hyper-local weather station with real-time dashboards and historical data — all running locally.

Hyper Local Weather

Weather apps tell you what's happening at the nearest airport. I wanted to know what's happening in my backyard — literally. So I built a hyper-local weather station and wired it into my smart home.

The Hardware

After researching options, I went with the Ambient Weather WS-5000 station. It includes:

  • Temperature and humidity sensors (indoor and outdoor)
  • Wind speed and direction
  • Rain gauge
  • Solar radiation and UV sensors
  • Barometric pressure

The station communicates via Wi-Fi to a base station, which can push data to various services.

Going Local

Out of the box, the WS-5000 wants to send data to Ambient Weather's cloud and Weather Underground. That's fine as a secondary destination, but I wanted the primary data flow to stay local.

Ecowitt Protocol

The station supports the Ecowitt protocol, which lets you point weather data at a custom HTTP endpoint on your local network. I configured it to send data to my Home Assistant instance running on a dedicated Intel NUC.

Home Assistant Integration

Using the Ecowitt integration, Home Assistant receives weather updates every 30 seconds. From there, I set up:

  • Real-time dashboard: Current conditions displayed on a wall-mounted tablet
  • Historical graphs: InfluxDB stores all readings, Grafana visualizes trends
  • Automations: Close the motorized skylights if rain is detected. Adjust HVAC based on outdoor temperature trends rather than just current temp.

The Fun Part: Micro-Climate Data

Living in Southern California, microclimates are real. My backyard can be 10°F different from what the nearest weather station reports. Having hyper-local data means:

  • I know exactly when frost risk is real (not when the NWS issues a generic advisory)
  • I can track the marine layer's arrival and departure
  • My irrigation system adjusts based on actual rainfall at my house, not an airport 5 miles away
  • Historical data reveals patterns (like how the Santa Ana winds affect my specific location differently than the general forecast suggests)

Dashboard Snapshot

The Grafana dashboard shows:

  • 24-hour temperature/humidity overlay
  • Wind rose showing prevailing direction
  • Rainfall accumulation (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly)
  • Solar radiation curve (useful for planning solar panel output expectations)
  • Barometric pressure trend (my favorite for predicting weather changes)

Takeaway

A local weather station turns weather from a passive phone-check into active, useful data. Combined with home automation, it makes your house genuinely smarter — reacting to conditions as they happen in your specific location, not at the nearest airport.